we got ed. the rachel maddow show. it gets a whole lot smarter now. not at all true. i love having you at 8:00 and lawrence at 10:00. this is a lot of fun. thanks. thanks to you at home for staying with us the next hour. listen to this. rick perry is tanking as a presidential candidate. honestly, i really thought rick perry would be better than this. he's been bad at the debates. he does not seem to be good as talking about his record as texas governor and has the likability factor of a small, sharp rock that you know is in your shoe, it's killing you every time you take a step but you can't find it to get it out of there. in the national cbs/"new york times" poll, governor perry has fallen off a cliff. herman cain is in the national lead followed pretty closely by mitt romney. rick perry is down at fifth. soon after rick perry got into the race, he was winning that same poll with 23% of the vote in mid september. by mid october that was down to 12% of the vote.

now he is down to 6% of the vote. rick perry is tanking as a candidate. and so time for a rick perry comeback. probably. at least that seems to be the idea. rick perry this week unveiling a kitchen sink strategy of trying everything all at once. since mitt romney has been doing well by being the establishment candidate, tanking rick perry went and got himself establishment republicans to be his new staffers. there are frankly not that be establishment republican staffers out there and still available at this point. there was one guy left over from the first george w. bush run who was still available and still willing to talk to rick perry. perry snatched him up. other than that, perry picked himself up old bob dole staffers from when bob dole, remember him, from when he ran 15 years ago. so tanking rick perry has got himself some old school republican staff help this week. also there's that herman cain who seems to be doing well with his 9-9-9 version of a flat tax.

tanking rick perry has come up with his own version of a flat tax that accomplishes the same goal of huge tax cuts for rich people and big tax hikes for everyone else. so tanking rick perry has all of a sudden this week got himself some old school establishment republican staff like mitt romney has and got himself a flat tax sort of like herman cain has. but when time is short and you are really tanking and really desperate, a kitchen sink strategy really does mean trying everything all at once. and so from the flash in the pan candidacy of donald trump, the reality tv person, tanking rick perry is also now going with questioning the president's birth certificate. seriously. raising the birth certificate issue in "parade" magazine this weekend and then doubling down on the birth certificate thing in an interview with john harwood at cnbc. >> mitt romney after the president released his birth certificate earlier this year said that issue's done and

settled. i accept it. you chose to keep it alive in your interview with "parade" magazine over the weekend. why did you do that? >> it's a good issue to keep alive. just, you know, donald's got to have some fun, so -- >> but are you saying that your comments about that are kind of a joke? or do you seriously have an unresolved question like donald trump has about this? >> i don't have a clue about where the president and what this birth certificate says, but it's also a great distraction. i'm not distracted by it. >> i'm not distracted by it but rather stoking it for all it's worth. what is it worth at this point anyway? a few votes maybe? dredging up the birther conspiracy again is not a distraction for tanking rick perry. this is not an inadvertent eddie into which he's accidentally gotten himself stuck while he was really trying to get people to pay attention to his tax plan. this birth certificate thing

he's doing now is on purpose. this is the filthy drain hole in his kitchen sink strategy, the conspiracy theory about whether or not president obama is sec t secretly foreign. governor perry today announced that he, he, governor perry will show his birth certificate in order to keep alive the fervent fantasies of the baked on crust of the republican base that president obama is secretly not really the president at all, that he's secretly from a foreign country. >> somebody want to see my birth certificate, i'd be happy to show it to them. >> as he tanks in the polls, texas governor rick perry says he for one will happily release his birth. everybody understands that when you are tanking as badly as rick perry is tanking, when you are rick perry and have never lost an election and are losing this one this badly, you have got to try everything at once. you have got to try a kitchen sink strategy. everybody knows that every kitchen sink does have a filthy little drain hole in it, a filthy little drain hole

personified by donald thump this year and rick perry climbed into that hole with him. the reason there's room for rick perry to try to make a comeback in the case is the same reason there was room for him to get into the race in the first place. overwhelming republican dissatisfaction. overwhelming dissatisfaction among republican base voters with this guy, mitt romney. mitt romney has appeared to hit a ceiling in terms of support among republicans. when polling on this republican presidential field started about a year ago, mitt romney sat at about 23% support. now a year later mitt romney sits at about 23% support. mitt romney is mr. 23%. he cannot seem to get above that no matter how many other candidates rise and fall around him. among the things holding hit romney back as a candidate, listen to what republican voters say about him, is the perception of mitt romney, it's frankly well earned perception of him, of having a substance problem. not having a substance abuse

problem, but having the problem that he does not seem to have substance. he seems unsubstantial, he seems willing to take any position on any issue. particularly on things that are supposed to reflect core values, core moral beliefs. mitt romney seems to say whatever he thinks his audience might like to hear that day. >> i believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. i believe that since row roe v. wade has been the law for 20 years, we should sustain the law and the right of the woman to make that choice. it's long past time for supreme or the to return the issue of abortion back to the states by overturning roe v. wade. look, i was an independent during the time of reagan/bush. i'm not trying to return to reagan/bush. well, you can learn some lessons from ronald reagan. ronald reagan rallied america with peace through strength.

i'll actually establish something aisle goii'm going to reagan economic zone. >> he was for abortion rights, now against abortion. in the same other romney era in 1996, mitt romney derided the idea of a flat tax as a, quote, tax cut for fat cats. mitt romney was anti-flat tax in the 1990s. now mitt romney say ts, i quotei love a flat tax. this is not a bad habit mitt romney left behind from an earlier stage in his career, disavowing positions he take in the roaring '90s. he's disavowing positions he took in june of this year. in june of this year mitt romney came out in full support of the republican union stripping effort in ohio. republicans there passed an a t anti-union bill, sb-5. mitt romney, quote, my friends

in ohio are fighting to defend crucial reforms that the state has put in place to limit the power of union bosses. since then the union stripping thing has proven to be incredibly, incredibly unpopular among the people of ohio. a new poll out shows iowa residents, excuse me, ohio residents by a 25 point margin want to repeal the yunion stripping thing when on the ballot next month. 57% of registered voters in ohio are against the union stripping thing. 32% are for it. that's a 25% margin against it. with the unpopularity of that new union stripping law looming, mitt romney went to ohio today having endorsed john kasich and the union stripping thing, having scheduled a campaign stop to go buck up and encourage and give a pep talk to the people making phone calls to defend that union stripping thing. when mitt romney actually got to ohio, he decided not to take a position on the union stripping thing today.

>> i'm not -- i'm not speaking about the particular ballot issues. those are up to the people of ohio, but i certainly support the effort of the government to reign in the scale of the government. so i'm not familiar with the two ballot initiatives. >> i'm not terribly familiar with the things i endorsed two months ago that's now wildly unpopular. before the last few weeks the worry about mitt romney's candidacy was clear. social conservatives are going to have a problem with him because he's flip-flopped a lot. the beltway wisdom was that was not going to an insurmountable problem for romney this year because this year's election is not about the economy but social issues. on the economy mitt romney was supposed to be rock solid. now mitt romney is showing he has the famous mitt romney gummy worm spine on economic issues the same way he does on social issues, telling people what they want to hear in the moment, forgetting what are supposed to

be his core beliefs on issues like this year's republican fad flat tax and busting unions. whatever you think of those issues substantively, this is the reason why mitt romney's polling has looked like this for a year and why every other republican candidate is not only banking on mitt romney's polling never going like this, but it probably eventually going like this. so, yeah, rick perry may be tanking badly, and yeah, herman cain may be unbelievable as a candidate, but days like today are why we know there will be a non-romney candidate resurgence. days like this also remind us of the fundamentals of why mitt romney is such a bad candidate for republicans. and sadly, days like this also tell us what that non-romney candidate resurgence is likely to look like. hi, orly. hi, rick. joining us now is wayne slater for the "dallas morning news." thanks for your time tonight. nice to see you. >> great to be with you, again, rachel. >> from what you have seen on

the campaign trail of how mitt romney is approaching trying to win the nomination, how do you explain the about face/face plant on the union issue in ohio? denying his own position on the issue at a phone bank in ohio that was organized around that issue. >> yeah, i mean, it seems like that would have been a slam dunk republican primary, union issue, you vote against it, you've been against it, you say today you're against it. he didn't. the only way i think to understand this is to understand that mitt romney is not running in the republican primary. he is actually thinks he is running in the general election. and that realizing how unpopular this senate bill five is on the ballot, that he doesn't want to hurt his opportunities with independent voters including some moderate republican votes w ers who must be among the constituencies who are going to vote for this. the problem for romney, not only did he flip-flop on this issue, which is a big problem, it is that he's running in the wrong

election i think because rick perry and others are running in the primary where they're trying to gather the farre epartest rig of the party around them and the issues that will congeal them around his candidacy, while mitt romney just sits there at 23% to 24% to 25%. >> wayne, part of the reason that i have thought that rick perry would be a stronger candidate, and why i still expect a comeback from him at some point, is because of reporting out of texas including your reporting out of texas about how rick perry has never lost an election, how he shouldn't be underestimated in any political contest. what do you think is going on with him embracing the birth certificate thing of all things? why has he brought that back when everybody thoughtcrazy. i talked to people in austin, some of whom say why is he doing this? he's stepping on his jobs message. he knows exactly what he's doing in this regard. he's trying to have it both way. he's both suggesting as he did with the interview with john harwood this morning that it's

kind of a joke and he's kind of kidding around at the same time. he will continue to not say whether he believes the president was born in the country. what that allows him to do is both appeal to the, as i say, the marginalia of the republican right, the birthers, militias, the folks who believe barack obama was born in africa, but also -- that's only about 14% now in the polls. but also appeal to other republicans who like his style. again, these are not romney voters. these are republican voters who may be with herman cain right now or michele bachmann, still with her. they like it that perry, at least perry people hope they do, they like it that perry is not afraid of obama. that he's going to poke obama. that he's the guy that will go after obama. that really is a more fundamental message in this birther -- this birther kind of clown show, frankly. >> in terms of what you have

seen from him in previous campaigns, politico is reporting that texas republicans are slow even to endorse perry this time or around. of course, he is way down at 6%. have you ever seen perry this far behind in a race with so little support from his party? is there any way to know how he will react? >> no. he finished 39% in the election six, eight years ago. i have never really seen him that far behind. the only time i've seen him an underdog in a statewide election was 1990 against jim hightower. very popular republican. with karl rove's help on rick perry's side, you had karl rove leaking to newspapers including our own information and testimony from a secret grand jury investigating the agriculture department raising questions about corruption. stories in the newspaper. hightower was playing defense and ultimately rick perry won that race. 2002, rick perry went against a

democrat, tony sanchez, a banker, a billionaire banker from loredo and the attack, a rather scathing attack at the close of the campaign on television suggested the democratic opponent was involved in some way in the death of drug merchants and drug dealers, also was laundering drug money across the texas border. none of this was true, but perry has shown an ability with the folks around him to go after an opponent hammer and tong. so even though he is behind, if i'm mitt romney, just like kay bailey hutchison, one year ago here, i wouldn't let my guard down. he is a terrific campaigner. >> terrific in the sense of willing to do anything even if the stuff isn't true. wayne slater -- >> absolutely. >> -- senior political writer for "the dallas morning news."

you're li your living history of rick perry as a politician gets more and more valuable every day. thank you. have you seen this today? you have definitely seen this today. >> we need you to get involved because together we could do this. we can take this country back. ♪ i am america >> of course, you've seen this today, right? republicans are great at creating buzz worthy if inexplicable political ads. democrats, oh, democrats, democrats, democrats. democrats generally have not been as good as republicans at campaign ads that are buzz worthy recently. democrats kind of sort of finally got a really good one together. something pretty effective about something really important. from democrats. seriously. coming up. i'm your blind spot. [ humming ] and my job is easy. hide big things. you're good... [ crash ] [ laughing ] [ screaming ] [ tires screech ] and if you named your own price on car insurance,

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i've seen a lot of weird campaign ads. this one ranks up there. >> herman cain releases a new ad that features his chief of staff smoking a cigarette. >> it's an ad on cain's official youtube page that's causing a bit of a stir. >> this online campaign ad for herman cain is sparking controversy. >> this is an official herman cain campaign ad. >> lots of politics chatter today about herman cain's suddenly viral super weird web video ad-ish thing. the one starring his chief of

staff, head of americans for prosperity in wisconsin, talking about mr. cain during a smoke bre break. whether you think this is super weird on purpose or not, this super weird thing, the inexplicable smoke ad, everybody stalking about it in mr. cain's candidacy because of it. that kind of thing usually doesn't happen with democratic ads. nobody really ever talks about democratic ads. not recently at least. generally speaking, democratic ads are not that good. i'm sorry. be mad at me. my e-mail is rachel@msnbc.com. send me hate mail. i read it. i love it. it's true. democratic ads for right for whatever reason they try but tend to look like this one. there is a funny visual metaphor here going on, but the metaphor is also very confusing. the idea is that there is an elderly man who is maybe a firefighter or maybe dressed up like a firefighter. he's dancing for women who do not want him to be dancing for

them. this is supposed to be an ad about medicare. so, yeah, there's that. or there's this one which attempts to call mitt romney out on a pretty simple straightforward mitt romney-style flip-flop. one time mitt romney said barack obama had made the recession worse. then he denied he said that. so in that instance, your job, democrats, is pretty simple. just point out the flip-flop. democrats can't let it be schism. they two on and on and on with lots of long sound bites until you forget what it was mitt romney was supposed to be flip-flopping on and essentially produced a really long ad, a long, long ad of long mitt romney sound bites of him talking snack about the president and put a democratic label on it. ta-da! there's also this one, an ad about mitt romney having a meeting with donald trump which is a great negative ad opportunity. the democrats managed to put the photos up over playful music then end with this. >> if i -- if i -- if i --

>> that's the punch line. you know what? the democrats have, despite that recent track record, actually just made a good ad. on a good issue. check it out. here's this anti-romney ad from the dnc on an issue that's hard to get into in a 30-second ad. the housing crisis. but they did it and they did it well. this totally works. >> almost half of arizona homeowners under water. foreclosures everywhere. and what's mitt romney's plan? >> don't try and stop the foreclosure process. let it run its course and hit the bottom. >> let arizonans hit the bottom? >> don't try and stop the foreclosure process. let it run its course and hit the bottom. >> mitt romney's message to arizona, you're on your own. >> hit the bottom. >> the democratic national committee is responsible for the content of this ad. >> they did it. that made sense. it was 30 seconds.

the ad has the added bonus of not only being true and well done for once but an issue on which the democrats are actually doing something right now. >> we can't wait for an increasingly dysfunctional congress to do its job. where they won't act, i will. >> president obama in las vegas yesterday announcing a rules change at the federal level essentially to help allow people, allow more people to refinance their mortgages. to make them more affordable. a change he will make even without cooperation from congress. but some way, way, way more aggressive action on mortgages, and specifically on holding wall street accountable for using mortgages to blow up our economy, is happening not at the federal level but at the state level where new york state's progressive attorney general has thrown a wrench in the works of a planned settlement with big banks over their worst practices that led to the financial meltdown. pushing forward with a wide ranging investigation into the big questions here, like what the banks did, what they knew,

when they knew it and how criminally liable they might be for their actions. joining me, mr. snyderman. mr. attorney general, thank you for being here. i know you don't do a lot of interviews about this. >> good it be here, rh. >> the biggest economic issues facing the country, they're also very obtuse partisan politics around these things. do you think democrats have done well in responding to the mortgage crisis and misbehavior of the banks? >> i think we've done some things. i think the president's move this week was a good step. i'm a prosecutor and i took office in january, and beau biden, attorney general of delaware and i, thought we really needed to dig in a little bit deeper. we were doing an investigation into what caused the bubble and the crash in the housing market. it's really not all that obtuse. i mean, there are a lot of folks

who are trying to rewrite history and paint it like it was a volcano or an earthquake and now we can move on to the problem of paying too much to cops and teachers and firefighters. this was a manmade crisis. it was created by regulatory neglect and greed. i assure you without telling s investigation, we haven't found a trace of evidence that a cop, sanitation worker contributed to blowing up the american economy. we're digging in and think we can do more. we think we're going to be able to obtain real meani iningful relief. there are 11 million homes across the country. we have to hold accountable to people who caused this disaster and just as important, as i say, we got to get this out in the open so they can't rewrite history. i mean, mr. romney's comments, we should just let things hit bottom, this is the same sort of deregulatory mania that they were dishing out in 2005 and

2006. that didn't work so well for the economy. >> did this catastrophe happen because dereg -- as far as what you have been able to determine so far, because deregulation proceeded to a point where banks could act legally in a way that was nevertheless dramatically fiscally irresponsible or are we looking at a case of potential illegal behavior, behavior that was against the law despite the fact that they had been so deregulated? >> well, that's why you have an investigation. there may well have been a combination of the two. there's no question that they dismantled a lot of the safety mechanisms that have protected our markets for a long time. but, you know, we're also looking at the conduct of individual institutions and individuals to see if there were misrepresentations made, to see if there was fraud committed, to see if criminal acts were also a part of this. that's what beau and i are looking at and we're determined to follow it through until we get the relief the homeowners need and hold accountable the people who caused this.

>> that issue of holding people accountable is a gutteral instinct in american politics now because we know the fiscal crisis was a manmade crisis. this was something where people did the wrong thing and thereby hurt the entire country. country is still paying but nobody paid for what they did. that's a base raw feeling that's driving occupy wall street protests right now but driving anger in the country, left, right and center. you and beau biden have jurisdictional opportunities here because of where institutions are incorporated that had a lot to do with these problems. is there more that could be done at the federal level right now, starting now in 2011 that hasn't been done? are there demands that should be done to hold wall street accountable? >> it's challenging for the president because the republicans in congress have essentially openly declared they'll do things they know hurt the american people just to prevent him from getting a win. but as you say, we do have

jurisdiction, because the mortgage-backed securities that brought down the country were all issued out of new york trust or delaware trust. we're pursuing it. you're absolutely right. a lot of folks look at occupy wall street and the other occupations and think they're fringe characters. i hear the same sense that we don't have one set of rules for everyone anymore, that people are not held accountable for misconduct. from every average american you run into, anywhere else, in a community hall meeting, in a diner, all over new york state, i'm sure all over america, there is a sense that equal justice under law is no longer the rule for this country. and we have to get that back. i mean, as much as the economic damage is terrible, for americans to lose the sense that this is a country where law governs and you're not above the law and you're not below the law, i mean, you know, the law applies to everyone. the sense of accountability is one of the key motivators for our investigation and there are other ags who are coming our way. i think there are actually going to be quite a few investigations

before this is over. >> as new york state's attorney general, am i right your office isquite near the low eer manhattan occupy wall street encampment? >> it is. right across the park. >> from what i hear you saying right now, my sense is when you look at the folks out there protesting every day, you have some sympathy for what they're doing? >> i, you know, i see them as part of a -- they're the tip of a much bigger iceberg. i spend a lot time traveling around the state. i have 13 regional offices. i assure you that if anyone who thinks the american people have gotten over their anger at the bubble and the crash, over their sense of betrayal that the fundamental american idea of equal justice under law has, you know, really been let go by the wayside, they're wrong. people are mad. people want -- not because they're hostile or vicious, they just want to know there's one set of rules for everyone. i don't hear that much different in most of the occupy wall street folks from what i hear everywhere else in the state as i travel around. >> new york state attorney general eric schneiderman. thank you for taking the time to

talk to us. i know you don't do this often. i really appreciate it. i would just say in terms of looking at accountability issues and wall street and where occupy wall street goes and that feeling in the country, keep an eye on new york state attorney general eric schneiderman and beau biden. set google alert on these guys. watch what they're doing. an accident... to asthma. a new heartbeat... to a heart condition. when you see your doctor, you don't face any medical issue alone. you do it together. at the american medical association, we're committed to preserving that essential partnership between patients and their doctors. because when it comes to your health, you need someone you trust. the ama. protecting the relationship between patients and physicians.

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melted down reactors, that caused a near apocalyptic nuclear crisis. it was the past march in japan. the earthquake that beget the tidal wave and meltdown, begat 20 tons of trash, debris that wu washed into the pacific ocean. japan is on the west side of the pacific ocean. we're on the pacific ocean's east side. the people keeping track of this floating mass of trash stew have a good idea of when it will float over the pacific ocean to the united states. according to new forecasts from researchers at university of hawaii, these 20 tons of debris will hit hawaiian shores sometime in the winter of spring of 2013. the trash will proceed further east and slosh over to the pacific northwest hitting the coast of washington and oregon around the start of 2014. now, the massive release of radioactivity from the melted down reactors at fukushima took place in a slow motion disaster

after the quake and tsunami washed that debris into the ocean. there's not worry that it's radioactive. a russian ship passed by the debris last month and found no abnormal levels of radiation in the trash. our beloved noaa agrees whatever risk the 20 ton slick of trash poses, it's not a radioactive risk. so, we, giant trash problem in the sea, yes. however, not a radioactive giant trash problem. so that's your first instance of good nuclear news today. only the first. we have more happy news about rad radioactivity ahead. seriously. i needed more customers,

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exclusive to the military. and commitment is not limited to one's military oath. the same set of values that drive our nation's military are the ones we used to build usaa bank. from free checking to credit cards to loans, our commitment to the military, veterans, and their families is without equal. ♪ visit us online to learn what makes our bank so different. usaa. we know what it means to serve. when bill clinton was reelected in 1996, that made him the first democratic president since franklin roosevelt to be re-elected to a second term. republicans don't have that great a presidential track record either. ronald reagan and george w. bush were the only two to serve two terms since ike. richard nixon was a republican and got elected twice but of course had to quit during his

second term because he was a crook. richard nixon's first vice president turned out to be a crook. when he had to resign before nixon did, nixon appointed a new vice president named gerald ford. that was an appointment, not an election. so when nixon then had to quit, too, this man who was never elected president and who was never elected vice president, a man who had been appointed to that position and then only got to the oval office because the two crooks ahead of him in line got caught and had to quit, gerald ford inexplicably became president of the united states. then less than one month after taking office in the rather gangster sort of way, gerald ford said richard nixon according to him was off the hook. scot-free. >> i deeply believe in equal justice for all americans. whatever their station or former station. the law, whether human or divine, is no respecter of

persons but the law is a respecter of reality. now, therefore, i, gerald r. ford, president of the united states, do grant a full, free and absolute pardon unto richard nixon for all offenses against the united states which he, richard nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in. >> so richard nixon had to quit the presidency, but he never otherwise had to play what he did. the nation turfed the person who pardoned nixon out of office the first chance they had to vote on him on over time gerald ford excusining everything nixon did moving on, not looking back, became a lauded decision, patriotic move. that the country would be better off not deal with this anymore,

that we needed our long national nightmare of finding out what a crook our president was to be over. in his new book "constitutional lawyer and principle provocateur glenn greenwald argues the american public was right the first time when we reacted to the pardoning of richard nixon with revulsion and anger. the precedent of that pardon, of important people getting away with crimes because it is disruptive and upsetting to our institutions, if they don't get away with it, glenn argued that set us up for four straight decades lousy with important people being able to commit crimes simply because they're important people. that has led us to this moment. an america long divided between rich and poor, that has led to a country where the 99% are starting to look at the 1% and look at the political elites not just as lucky, not just as elite but as beneficiaries of a system that is not fair. and that hasn't been fair for a long time now. joining us now, my friend glenn

greenwald, contributor writer at salon. his latest book "with liberty and justice for some." i liked it so much i blurbed it on the back. you highlighted the pardon of nixon as an important sort of political inflection point in modern american politics. what of that rationale do you still see surviving in american politics? >> look at the last decade when you see enormous numbers of crimes being committed. egregious crimes by the most powerful people in the society. the creation of a worldwide torture regimes spying on american citizens without the warrants required by criminal law and aggressive attack on iraq. various aspects of obstruction of justice. the destruction of evidence. the courts and the 9/11 commission ordered to be preserved. private sector, massive fraud precipitating the financial crisis, mortgage fraud on a systemic level. telecoms participating in the

spying. none of those are not bad policy decisions or immoral acts. those are crimes. none have led to meaningful criminal investigations yet alone criminal prosecutions or accountability. the reason is because we know are a country that explicit sly argues political elites and financial elites, private sector elites should be immunized from the rule of law because all the things you pointed out were argued by gerald ford to justify the pardon of richard nixon. it created this precedent and mindset that seeped into the private sector as well that the rule of law is only for what occupy wall street calls the 9 9%. >> that last transition point, that it became not just an unpleasantness to be avoided but an active political good to insulate elites from accountability for the good of the institutions that they represent. for the good of the nation's stability. that justified all of the pardons of the reagan administration officials after

iran contra. it's what you say, you name a chapter too big to jail. too big to fail, coming after our discussion with eric schneid schneiderman who does not believe in too big to jail. how did it become a good to excuse wrongdoing rather than just bad to be avoided? >> keep in mind, there's a big split on this question between media and political elites on the one hand and ordinary americans on the other. as you pointed out, the pardon of richard nixon triggered revulsion among the american population. you listen to it now and recoil at the idea this criminal, this clearly fragrantly criminal individual, richard nixon, was protected by virtue of a status. so what you see is there's an elite class that supported that pardon and continues to say, we cannot have investigations of the bush torture regime. it was good casper weinberger was pardoned because he's a good

man who doesn't belong in prison. interested to maintain the elite immunity arguing for it. if you look at polls, it's not the pardon of nixon that triggers revulsion. large majorities wanted investigations into what the bush torture scheme, the eavesdropping program, whether the obstruction of justice were criminal and illegal. inculcated in the american mind is the idea we're all equal before the law. it's because we're not you see citizen anger and loss of faith and legitimacy of institutions. >> the reason we have faith in the institutions is not because they're institutions and stable, but because we want to believe they're just. it's a confrontational point, and you make it beautifully. thank you for writing this book. it's a big deal and really important. >> thank you for having me. i appreciate it. >> glenn's new book called "with liberty and justice for some." it's really, really good. recommend it. all right.

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two years ago the great state of new hampshire became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage through the legislature. no court decisions involved. live free or die. last year, in the great red tide of the 2010 election, the legislature changed hands. democrats out, republicans in

and the republican majority pledged to take away that right of new hampshire same-sex couples to get married. republicans on the judiciary committee recommended rescinding same-sex marriage rights. by a big majority, the people of new hampshire said same-sex marriage has had no impact on their lives. because this right to get married has made some lives better without afblgting them at all they would rather keep the right than having it taken away. from the polling, strong opponents of repealing same-sex marriage out number pro- points by two to one with. in other words the people who want to repeal same-sex marriage rights are out numbered here. not if they fake some more supporters. this is the website for the national organization for marriage. the organization for straight people only marriage in new hampshire. you can see the big crowd gathered they are cheering. there's brian brown, the president of the straight people

only marnl group. he's firing them up. and see the kid on the shoulders. he's really in it to. unless the people are not actually there in new hampshire cheering to take away gay people's rights or if if the crowd is in a speech in downtown columbus ohio for barack obama and there's the kid on someone's shoulder and the women in the pink shirt and but they are all in to this guy who's about to be elected president in 2008. the people watching him that day in columbus had no idea through the magic of photo top shopping they would be part of a campaign against gay rights 600 miles away in 2011. the blog good as you connected the dots today for the world to see. the national organization for marriage is just making it up. they and the republicans in the

legislature do not have popular support to take a nice picture of for taking away marriage rights currently enjoyed in new hampshire. because they don't have it, they are faking it instead. caught you. ♪ [ female announcer ] who'd have thought that the person you'd grow up to be -- how creative or confident or kind -- was shaped before you lost your first tooth? ♪ the first five years are forever. ♪ that's why pnc is devoting $250 million and ten more years to helping families discover learning opportunities all around them. pnc. grow up great.

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>>. >> that iconic scene from the 1964 "dr. strangelove" it is not clear what weapon major congress is riding to his target. it was loaded on a b-52 part of armor that were kept 24 hours a day in case of attack. that means dro dr. strangelove's fictional bomb was probably based on the b-53 that was made two years before the movie came out. it was so norrous only a b-52 bomber was big enough to carry it. it weighed 10,000 pounds. slated to deliver an explosion 600 times the explosion in hiroshima. it was designed they first bunker buster. it would land softly on the ground and explode with enough power to collapse shelters 750

feet under ground and like dr. strangelove's bomb it was on 24 hours a day in case of attack. dozens were still in u.s. active stockpiles for decades. even though, according to the "washington post" request quote they were considered so dangerous that only dummies were used when crews practiced loading an unloading them on b-52s. as early as 993 they were recommended they be retired as soon as possible saying it had no assured level of nuclear safety in a broad range of multiple abnormal environments. eke! there's only one place the united states has that is built to assemble and disassemble weapons and it is in amarillo, texas. thousands of warheads are slated to be dismantled. there half of the plant's work consists of updating our current nuclear arsenal. this is a moment of geek, it

seems like a moment of eke. here's the geek it is so old and unsafe it took panteches three years to figure out how to take it apart. and even after taking three years to take it apart it wasn't until april of last year, a week after president obama signed a landmark agreement with russia to get gut cut both of our nuclear arsenals by a third they announced they finally had the safety systems in place to speed up disassembling these thing and today the work was completed. we are talking about nuclear physics and mechanics so geeky and dangerous it took a generation to arrive to today. there is not an active b-53 in existence. the final bomb was nicknamed the last of the big dogs. workers physically separated the high explosives from the nuclear material inside